Took one first date to a football match as she was a massive football fan, turned out she was completely mental when at football gave us something to chat about after though lol

Dont get to drunk, mate ended up in A&E after trying to impress one girl on first date

Thats cracking advice (not the A&E bit). You do get serious brownie points for crafting a first date that ties in with the interests of your company for the evening. You do have to have a degree of prior knowledge to make it work of course – I’d taken the pish out of my better halfs driving for months. So our first date was a trip to the local kart track and an hour or so bashing away at each other.

That lead to a nice meal on the way home and several pleasant and amusing hours, over a few glasses of an agreeable vintage, debating the relative merits of her fluent driving style and my victory! 🙂

3 years later she still hasnt forgiven me for not letting her win, but, we have a great relationship!.

I don’t know – are we really already at a point where the on-board analysis of an unmanned platform can compete with that of a manned platform?

We are certainly at a point where target recognition off optronics is a feasibility. Its not, for my money, a difficult proposition to apply a filter in the UAV logic that enables a level of selectivity in what the individual UAV feeds back. If the correct sensitivity is enabled and the TRA’s dont get a match off a known profile the feed only then gets shunted to the satellite for human intervention. Bandwidth savings could be quite significant with such a relatively simple step.

Also: Not even BAMS can drop sonobuoys. And what about the direct communication with the subs to rely target data? And I also believe that a survivable system has to get away from relying purely on orbital assets to control long-range UAVs. What is needed is a kind of relay-UAV to do it via incremental LOS ad-hoc networks.

The sonar element I was more thinking of a theatre search asset like SOSUS (UK relevent) or SURTASS than a UAV dispensing sonobuoys – the UAV’s own sensors being more for the traditional surface picture. That does generate the thought that the UAV’s could be, again relatively simply, employed in that fashion however. Not dispensing sonobuoys themselves but acting as a front-end processor and airborne relay platform for buoy lines sown by an MRA4 or other such platform.

We needed carriers only once (’82). We’ve used them occasionally since, but land based air power could always have got their quicker, and done the job better and more cost effectively.

…and you are considered bright in some circles are you?.

We’ve engaged in unsupported expeditionary warfare how many times since 1945?. How many has the senior service had to sit out because it cant get there?.

Yes land based FJs rely on local basing, but so do the tankers and ISTAR assets on which CVF’s air wing will also rely, much of the time.

Obvious tosh. No tankers in 82 and a sea jet with half the range of anything proposed for CVF airwing. ISTAR – when the RAF’s new capability is a bizjet that cant AAR?.

And if host nation support is unavailable, then chances are that any op will be unsustainable.

Its a definite without carriers though isnt it?. Then again the RAF are well used to staying home while the other services do the real fighting arent they!.

The choice is between spending obscene amounts of money on CVF/JSF (a capability we’ll never need, and if we did, could rely on the US to provide) or on spending on the capabilities we need every single time we mount military operations.

Carriers may be great for flag waving and holding cocktail parties, but pretending that they represent a cost effective means of projecting air power is deluded, and no amount of dark-blue wishful thinking is ever going to dispell that. As to “global presence”, it’s about time that Britain tailored its military capabilities and aspirations to what it can afford to pay for.

Tailor its forces????. What???. We can spend how many billions on Typhoon when the last threat to the British Isles involved Chain Home and ‘big wings’ and you think £4bn on carriers is too much?. Christ man get your head out of that light-blue types’ backside and look around a bit. We went to exped warfare in the 98 SDR?.

I dont know whether it would necessarily mean all that much to be honest.

The lads at Submarine Solutions in Barrow would likely get a lot more work. There would be a requirement for more SSN’s, perhaps even back to the original 12 hulls, and the new SSBN money would suddenly be ringfenced.

Other than that perhaps additional units of each class would be resourced but that would probably be about it. Maybe 2 or 3 new Darings over the 6 currently bought. C1 could see a few more units than originally intended perhaps with money for a few more 2087 arrays found. Mainly the intent would be to keep more ready hulls around and about over any great shift in tempo.

Why such a little impact…the Russian Navy isnt all that much of a threat to put it simply. The deployment to Venezuela plus the FFG heading to Somalia is taking up a good percentage of their active capital ship fleet. Whats left – a couple of Udaloys and Sovremenny’s in various states of readiness?. Turning that round with new and more capable designs in decent number will take a good long while. The sub fleet is obviously better provisioned for but the answer to an SSN is another SSN and the Astutes will do us quite nicely there by all acounts.

SSK still usefull if they can be built in greater numbers so as to ambush. And protection against ASW assets is the job of airpower now. longer range aircraft with even longer range missiles can practically deny rival ASW assets.

What???

Going into a Bastion area has been considered in precisely one of two ways I’ve ever heard of. First is with as many SSNs as you can sneak in to simultaneous shooting solutions before a bomber can launch its weapons and trigger the rest. Hence Captor/hydrophone arrays being extremely valuable.

The other way involves splashing down as many nuclear RV’s as possible inside the Bastion footprint and hoping that you can get your warheads in before the bombers can get their missiles to readiness.

In neither case would airpower of any range, carrying missiles of any range be a critical factor in proceedings.

UAZ,

Why is there so much hype about the SOSUS system? As if it can hear the fart of a sardine

SOSUS is a fantastically powerful array and whilst, to the best of my knowledge, sardines dont fart it is routinely used to study marine wildlife and may, ironically, be responsible for proving sardines dont fart!.

To give you an example of the capabilities of the SOSUS array it was used to localise the wreck of the USS Thresher. That sub sank 200nm off the coast of Massachusets!!!. It was also able to identify Sov SSBNs trying to sneak through into the deep basin under the hulls of Sov merchies – a common tactic employed by Yankee’s and early mark Delta’s – disproving the pin prick theory I’m afraid Austin.

What Nic says here is exactly right though. The chances of finding really accurate information on accoustic profiles of SSN’s in open source material is very rare. If you do see such information the chances of it being deliberately skewed are significant and the smart reader should look for an agenda.

OK a few points:

1, There never has been a Vic-III that has come close to matching the baseline radiated sound levels of a 688I at equivalent speed ranges. If there had been the Akula’s wouldn’t be being developed now as they would be less discrete than the Vics.

The ONLY reason that the Vic-III got a good rep in NATO ASW circles was because it was a huge improvement in discretion, throughout the speed range, over Vic-I and -II. On the subject of the accoustic sigs of the early Victor’s I have heard a former HAS.Mk6 ‘pinger’, flippantly, comment that they wouldnt lower the dipping tranducer…instead they’d lower a pint glass on the cable and track in with that.

2, This by the account from the Admiral occured in 1985 and was from boats that sortied Zap Litza. That means they’d already transitted GIUK and SOSUS. From which he says:

“I received the reports on many contacts with SSN USA and United Kingdom, which were developed those days on the Atlantic theatre.
Certainly, and our boats have not remained without attention. Rather concerned of themes, that whole division of nuclear underwater
cruisers USSR with anybody by the unknown purposes goes to coast of America, goes covertly, my colleagues – contenders from
Pentagun have thrown on search of a veil of tens patrol planes, powerful ASW of force.
Later commanders reported me, that was at times impossible going PD, during communication, or to lift shaft snorkhel for pump of
air in cylinders high pressure tanks. It was the real hunting with application of all means of search and detection SSN. Worked ESM
and radars, surface hydrolocators pinged ultrasonic beams of depth of Atlantic. The planes of base and deck patrol aircraft turned
above ocean round the clock, exposing barriers sonobuoys, using in all modes the onboard search equipment: MAD, IR, indicators of a
biotrace…

I know its fashionable to rewrite history on these boards, but, dont try it with ASW. The Admiral can write whatever history he likes and, from a perspective, his story might be a good one. In reality though those boats would have been engaged as they approached SOSUS. The only tactic I ever heard for the Soviets to break a good number of SSN’s into oceanic deep water was to blue-out the SOSUS net with an underwater nuclear detonation and then try and race boats through before SOSUS could get back up to speed. Hell of a thing to try and time with the state of underwater communications as it was back in 85 though!.

Just to reinforce the point. At NO TIME even to today have Soviet/Russian nuclear submarines reached accoustic parity with comparable generation US or British designs. In an area traditionally light on NATO ASW, like the Med, a concentrated force of SSN’s could very easily produce a local overmatch I’d agree. That is a long way from justifying the view that they were anywhere near a match for us in general terms as he seems to intimate.

Case in point the broken Russian sailor that HMS Glasgow landed in 1996?. Glasgow wasnt taking part in an ASW exercise off the Scottish coast – she was on JMC. Seems Russian Admirals are every bit as political as ours!!!.

Nicolas,

The upgraded Kilo’s are very good assets for the kind of fixed point patrol that Echo observes. Very discrete at low speeds and able to just chug along at a few knots and let the target blunder on in to torpedo range.

What I have argued against – consistently – is building C2 & C3 which can be represented (even if falsely) as cosmetic variants of the same ship.

I accept that, but, its a complete stretch to term the two things equivalent. One might as well say because Tornado GR4 looks a bit like an F3 that we have hundreds of fighters. No-one on the Defence Select Committee would be fooled by such an obvious lie and any politician attempting such chicanery would have to get past those MP’s with shipbuilding/naval systems constituency’s who would be most keen to see a large order run progress not to mention a reinforced squad of lobbyists from BVT. Remember, if you will, where CVF is being built and the reason why its the safest naval construction programme in recent history! 🙂

What about these options?
1) abandon C2, fight for more C1, then go for the highest capacity C3 you can get, or
2) design your optimum C2, & accept a smaller C3 to keep it distinct.
The roles of C3 will vary depending on the option.

The first option there is the one that devils-adocate-mode Ed was proposing. A C3 with work deck, aviation capability and the ‘front end’ of the stock Khareef complete with VLS bins. To me that is inefficient as we end up sending vessels out on droggie missions that are very expensively over-equipped for the task. It would be an EXTREMELY flexible force though. Any vessel theoretically being able to be retasked to enter even a significant threat environment on receipt of the ops-order. That to me, though, is Swerve’s big nightmare. That proposal is the scenario that lends itself to being painted as the RN trying to get all its warship numbers back on the sly.

The second option is, probably, the most expensive and will result in the least operational capability available to the RN. Basically minor war vessels stay in their current little box, perhaps streamlined a little better in support terms, and we try our damndest to see how many C2’s we can get built to try and cover the patrol slots….and probably end up trying to wriggle out of at least one of them (I’d guess at SNMG-2).

If that means C3 can’t do anti-drug patrols on the W. Indies station, then in this scenario, so what? The modest C2 you propose can, at an affordable price. In the high-end (or no) C2 scenario, you get fewer (or no) C2s, but that gives scope for a more capable C3, able to do the W. Indies patrol, pirate-chasing, etc.

Thing is with that though Swerve is that anti-drug is a patrol vessel tasking. Do you need a full-up combattant with SSM’s, SAMs, CIWS and all the combat systems to chase druggies. No – you need the systems I listed earlier. Why not just put the cheap big gun, standard air/surface search radar and ships flight capability on the cheap boat and let it do the job. Keep the combattant for possibe combat situations.

What I’m worried about is that we’d end up with combined C2/C3 numbers based on a perception of C2 as a frigate, & C3 as the same as C2, if they’re too similar, & a common hull would make them too similar.

Its all in the optimisation. Give the C2 a work deck and the ability to do the C3s job and you’re right. Give the C2 a different Type number and a different class name and I think you’d be quite suprised as to how different they could be percieved. For example how many people do you know who would refer to a T22B3 as a ‘Broadsword’ class?.

BTW, I said ‘if the 155mm plans go ahead, C3 could be introduced into a navy which is phasing out the 4.5″‘. Clearly, that is not the same as saying the 4.5″ is being phased out now.

Ah yes I get you….sorry. The mod 1 version of the Mk8 is still a relatively new mount and has a lot of life left in it. With the developed logistic train and stockpiled ammo I still see it as the most cost effective solution for C3. I do take your point though that by the time C3 comes round the move to the new gun may well be under way.

Do you see the modest, but numerous C2 as having an implication for numbers of C1? Or do you think we’d be OK with 14 (6 T45 + 8 C1) high-end warfighters?

C1 is ringfenced by its capabilities. ASW is still big news and is likely to get more important before it declines. Those 8 2087 sonars define the capability. In that way I dont see C2 impacting C1 in any way at all.

As to whether a mere 14 high end warfighters is enough obviously the answer is no….it isnt. It leaves us so thin when we are deployed its chronic, but, its hard to see how we are going to get any more without a new Cold War though and I certainly wouldnt care for that all over again. There is also the point that no-one else in Europe is going to be much better off!.

The best we can hope for then is to retain the technical capability in the high-end warfighters and get something cheaper to do the routine stuff so the warfighters last longer. IF they can be kept at high availability for combat ops a ready task group of a CVF, 3-4 T45’s, 5-6 C1’s and a trio of Astutes in support will be a hard target for anyone to go up against. Imagine how long the Falklands War would have taken with that lot steaming south!. Any takers for longer than a week?. Which is, I guess, the point at the end of the day.